School Board Approves New School Support Structure

The Evansville Vanderburgh Board of School Trustees tonight (5-4-15) approved a new way of supporting schools – with Directors of School Support over each high school attendance district, consisting of a high school and the middle schools and elementary schools that are feeders to it.

Superintendent David Smith explained that through 1½ years of research and the example of success in the EVSC Transformation Zone, leadership has developed a plan to support all schools in a differentiated fashion, re-aligning people with needs and re-allocating resources to fund the changes.

Currently, 34 school principals report to the Chief Academic Officer. Through work with Mass Insight Education, “we have investigated strategies to take us to the next level,” Smith said.

Best practices identified from across the nation showed the greatest success in the clustering of schools, similar to the EVSC’s Transformation Zone model recently approved by the State Legislature as an option for school improvement strategies. Now, five Directors of School Support will be embedded in the schools and will support one high school attendance district. The sixth Director will be over all high schools, as well as innovative model schools.

During the meeting, Smith read from a list of more than 30 individuals who have left the corporation for other pursuits in the last several years, whose positions were never filled. He said the new Directors of School Support will be funded through re-allocated monies -- a combination of monies saved through not filling these positions, as well as grant monies. “We have consciously not filled many positions as this strategy has been developed,” he said. “We have looked at how to better support the needs of school leadership and revised positions throughout Central Office to more directly support their work.” The Directors of School Support will now be school-based positions.